Advice please...

NatashaP

Hi!

My husband asked me to ask you lovely peeps for some advice. Three years ago he signed up to a computer course with scheideggar, which cost about £3k (scheideggar arranged a loan through Career Development Finance as hubby wanted to pay by installments). Anyway, things started fine but my hubby started to question a few things about the course after a few months and halfway through the course he told both scheideggar and CDF he would no longer by paying for the course as they had misinformed him about the course quite badly - they lied basically! He paid half of the course fee but only got a few ringbinders with very out of date material enclosed. He was promised up to date study material (ut was a fair few years out of date), hands-on experience at hotels (didnt get), he was promised various materials in order to do the practical element (this turned out to be paper cut-outs of computer components!!!), he was promised round-the-clock tuition but he could never get hold of the tutor - NEVER, the course claims to pay for the exams (hubby had to pay for this himself which he failed due to learning completely out of date stuff!) and when he tried to claim the money back for the exam he was fobbed off and told he would get the money back at the end of the course, he was also promised £150 as a reward for recommending a friend (which he now totally regrets as his friend is in the same boat) but again, has not seen this materialise, Scheidegger also claimed that the agency Manpower were working with them but this was a lie as Manpower denied any involvement with this company....he has paid loads into the course but somehow they seem to think he owes alot more than what we think we owe...

Anyway, it now transpires that CDF are now issuing a court summons for what we owe. We are not disputing we owe them something, but since hubby told them he didnt want to continue they have never sent any more materials/books etc out. We paid over £1500 for a few shoddy ringbinders, now they want the rest, regardless of the fact the course will no longer be continued, or we get bailiffs knocking on our door!

Where do we stand and what should we do? CDF originally told hubby to write a letter to Scheidegger but we have not done so yet. We are now going to send letters to Scheidegger, CDF and now The Credit Information Bureau who have sent this letter to us about the court summons. Any ideas what we could put in the letters? Do we have a leg to stand on or are we up the creek without a paddle?

Sorry its so long!

RAS

Please contact the trading Standards office nearest the office that supplied these "goods" and ge tehm on your case.

NatashaP

Thanks RAS.

just googled them and the reviews on another website say say they've had exactly the same lies told to them, so good to see its not just us. I'm so angry!!!

Gemmzie

Sounds similar to Com-poo-teach

NatashaP

I'm absolutely rubbish at writing letters of complaint. What should I put? I want to make them fully aware of the severity of the whole thing and how much scheideggar have blatantly broken every single rule in the book by mis-selling in such a way but dont know how to word it. I haven't got a clue! Should we just get in touch with trading standards and take it from there, instead of writing letters?

poorandindenial

I used to work in second stage (ie beyond local resolution) complaints (not commercial) and the best thing you can do is pull together a timeline of events (as accurate and detailed as possible) and get all your documentation in order. Refs from docs should be transposed into the timeline with the overview of that doc and the docs should be put in date order so that everything is easy to find.

The timeline doesn't have to be flash, just a couple of columns in word with dates down the left and details of what happened in the right.

This will form a great basis for going through the process of getting this sorted and will make it easier for TS to advise you of what needs to happen next.